The present invention relates to automatic optimization for ultrasound medical imaging. One or more parameters are adaptively updated in a medical diagnostic ultrasound imaging system.
Different ultrasound parameters may be adaptively optimized. B-mode dynamic range and gain are adaptively optimized as a function of received ultrasound data. The adaptive optimization is performed at regular intervals, but irregular intervals based on a substantial change in an image may be provided as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,579,238 (application Ser. No. 09/791,405), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 6,733,454 (application Ser. No. 10/374,258), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses optimization of spectral Doppler parameters. For color flow imaging, other parameters may be updated. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,162,176, the distribution of the velocity values is used to identify a velocity threshold and color mapping. U.S. Pat. No. 6,478,742 discloses adjusting a pulse repetition frequency for automatic optimization. Maximum velocity along a single line of corrected velocity values is used to set the pulse repetition frequency. One dimensional reflection correction may result in residues or other artifacts in corrected velocities. The pulse repetition frequency may be set higher than optimal. For flow imaging parameters, the adaptive parameters may be incorrectly set or not fully optimized.